Thursday, 28 August 2014

The Return of the Little Green Men

One of the problems of Western journalism,
which Russia uses to its great advantage, is its apparent inability to identify
a spade as a spade unless it is witnessed by three independent sources.

Even after the capture of 10 Russian
soldiers on Ukrainian soil on Monday, the BBC on Wednesday night, in its
flagship World Service Newshour program, was referring to the troops who
crossed the Russian border and took control of the town of Novoazovsk on
Wednesday as "pro-Russian rebels."

Even if they were "rebels", the
reports failed to note that this well-armed force would have had to cross
Russian territory, with the connivance of the Russian authorities, to have
opened up a new front outside of the small, and until recently shrinking, patch
of ground that the anti-Ukrainian fighters previously held. It is implausible
to conclude that Russia did not support this escalation of the conflict. So why
was this not reported?

Well, in Crimea, as Russia discovered (or
actually understood quite well beforehand), the Western press was loath to draw
conclusions from second-hand and circumstantial evidence, probably for fear of
making an error. President Vladimir Putin and his generals used this fact to
effect a brazen takeover of the territory of another state. They have used the
same tactics of subterfuge and covert action to foment a "rebellion"
in the east of Ukraine. And they are using it again now to spread the war in
Ukraine.

We saw this excessive journalistic caution
again on August 17, when journalists from the UK newspapers the Guardian and
the Telegraph, Shaun Walker and Roland Oliphant, witnessed a column of Russian
APCs furtively violating the Ukrainian border at dusk. Even then, they could
not conclude the obvious – that that these were Russian reinforcements off to
prop up the teetering "rebel" defense in Luhansk and Donetsk – not
having seen this for themselves.

Why is this such a problem? Remember the
MH17 atrocity, when there was also a great deal of circumstantial evidence, but
no direct eyewitness reports, that the anti-Ukrainian forces shot down a civil
airliner? There was nevertheless a huge public outcry at this awful news of the
horrible deaths of nearly 300 people, including 80 children, and this outcry
undoubtedly caused the Western governments whose citizens had been killed to
take a firmer stand against Russia, introducing stricter sanctions. Western
governments, being democracies, have to have an eye on public opinion, as their
positions depend on it. Public opinion, in turn, is molded by the media. The
media thus have a great responsibility to provide correct information to the
public, as this will indirectly have an effect on government policies in a
democracy.

But the BBC, in continuing to refer to the
troops who invaded Novoazovks as "pro-Russian rebels" is not
providing correct information to the public in the UK, (and given the wide
reach of the World Service, the public in many other countries), about the true
state of affairs in Ukraine. The troops who invaded Novoazovk are Russian
regular soldiers, and there is a great deal of evidence that this is so.

First, the troops, according to several
eyewitness reports, are dressed in unmarked Russian-issue military uniforms.
They carry Russian-issue weapons. They are masked and wearing goggles, as in
Crimea. They refuse to speak to reporters (for fear of people hearing their
"Russian" Russian accents). They are supplied with Russian military
field rations – which they swap with the locals for more palatable fare.

Next, these troops are equipped with T-72B
tanks with reactive armor – these tanks are not in the Ukrainian arsenal: they
could not have been stolen from Ukrainian arms depots, they could only have
come directly from the Russian military.

Moreover, some of these troops have already
been captured, and videos of their interrogations are available on YouTube. The
BBC employs several native speakers of Russian as journalists. It is quite
possible for them to identify these men as Russian by their speech. Even Russia
has admitted that they are Russian troops, but claimed they strayed a dozen
miles into Ukraine "by accident." But is it really plausible that
some of Russia's finest troops are incapable of reading a map correctly? Why is
the media not asking such questions on behalf of the public?

Instead, we simply get interviews with
Russian officials – proven liars – presented as "the other side of the
story" as if what they had to say had the slightest credibility after what
happened in Crimea.

There is no doubt that the Little Green Men
are back, and have now invaded mainland Ukraine. As before, the Western
governments will probably try to ignore this, for fear of getting involved in
"a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know
nothing," to quote the wretched appeaser Neville Chamberlain.

It is the duty of the media not to allow
them to do this, to correctly report the real situation in Ukraine to the
Western public, so that the public will in turn bring pressure to bear on their
governments to make the correct response. The West's cautious approach to Putin
has failed. It failed to stop him after his annexation of Crimea, and its
continued use as a policy will fail to stop the destruction of the current
Ukrainian state, which is most probably one of Putin's aims. The West's calls
for Russia to "de-escalate or else" have proved useless, because
Putin has continued to escalate and the West has never come up with a
meaningful "else." Putin will escalate and escalate. He will not stop
until he achieves his aims or is actively prevented from doing so.

It's time for the media to call the
situation what it is – a direct invasion of Ukraine by Russia – and for the
West to take action to stop Putin.

Otherwise, Western journalists could soon
be reporting the arrival of the Little Green Men in Moldova, or Estonia, or
Latvia, or Lithuania.